d found
soft white lights overhead to be most suitable for my occasional night
work, but the Swami insisted that a blue light, a dim one, was most
suitable for his night work.

I made no objection to that condition. One of the elementary basics of
science is that laboratory conditions may be varied to meet the
necessities of the experiment. If a red-lighted darkness is necessary to
an operator's successful development of photographic film, then I could
hardly object to a blue-lighted darkness for the development of the
Swami's effects.

Neither could I object to the Swami's insistence that he sit with his
back to the true North. When he came into the room, accompanied by
Lieutenant Murphy, his thoughts seemed turned in upon himself, or wafted
somewhere out of this world. He stopped in mid-stride, struck an
attitude of listening, or feeling, perhaps, and slowly shifted his body
back and forth.

"Ah," he said at last, in a tone of satisfaction, "there is the North!"

It was, but this was not particularly remarkable. There is no confusing
maze of hallways leading to the Personnel Department from the outside.
Applicants would be unable to find us if there were. If he had got his
bearings out on the street, he could have managed to keep them.

He picked up the nearest chair with his own hands and shifted it so that
it would be in tune with the magnetic lines of Earth. I couldn't object.
The Chinese had insisted upon such placement of household articles,
particularly their beds, long before the Earth's magnetism had been
discovered by science. The birds had had their direction-finders attuned
to it, long before there was man.

Instead of objecting, the lieutenant and I meekly picked up the table
and shifted it to the new position. Sara and Auerbach came in as we were
setting the table down. Auerbach gave one quick look at the Swami in his
black cloak and nearly white turban, and then looked away.

"Remember semantics," I murmured to him, as I pulled out Sara's chair
for her. I seated her to the left of the Swami. I seated Auerbach to the
right of him. If the lieutenant was, by chance, in cahoots with the
Swami, I would foil them to the extent of not letting them sit side by
side at least. I sat down at the opposite side of the table from the
Swami. The lieutenant sat down between me and Sara.

The general manager came through the door at that instant, and took
charge immediately.

"All right now," Old Stone Face sa